Abstract

The explosion in mobile data traffic is a driver for future network operator technologies, given its large potential to affect both network performance and generated revenue. The concept of Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) has emerged in order to overcome efficiency-wise limitations in centralized mobility approaches, proposing not only the distribution of anchoring functions but also dynamic mobility activation sensitive to the applications needs. Nevertheless, there isn’t an acceptable solution for IP multicast in DMM environments, as the first proposals based on MLD Proxy are prone to tunnel replication problem or service disruption.
We propose the application of PIM-SM in mobility entities as an alternative solution for multicast support in DMM, and introduce an architecture enabling mobile multicast listeners support over distributed anchoring frameworks in a network-efficient way. The architecture aims at providing operators with flexible options to provide multicast mobility, supporting three modes: the first one introduces basic IP multicast support in DMM; the second improves subscription time through extensions to the mobility protocol, obliterating the dependence on MLD protocol; and the third enables fast listener mobility by avoiding potentially slow multicast tree convergence latency in larger infrastructures, by benefiting from mobility tunnels. The different modes were evaluated by mathematical analysis regarding disruption time and packet loss during handoff against several parameters, total and tunneling packet delivery cost, and regarding packet and signaling overhead.